Thank you all for your assitance, very patient and helpful all of you and it's much appreciated.
Crent, sorry for hijacking your thread. Good luck!

I may change out USB to new. Haven't decided yet if it's worth the hassle since I'm in the market for new PC anyways.

This was developers reply:

Quote:

For the 300th time, calibre uses standard operating system calls to read and write files on the Kobo. If you are having problems with the Kobo then the problem is in some combination of three places:

1) The Kobo (and this is by far the most likely)
2) The USB connectors (ports or cables)
3) Your computer's motherboard/USB drivers

And no doubt you will say that everything else works fine but calibre doesn't, so the problem must be in calibre. It's like saying your car works fine as long as you drive it below 35 MPH and the moment you take it over that speed the engine starts belching smoke. The Kobo Touch in combination with some hardware is simply not capable of handling the load calibre puts on it. That is not a bug in calibre.

If I were you I'd return my Kobo and get a decent non-Kobo reader that doesn't malfunction at the drop of a hat.

@Blue; are there any other PCs in the house? You might like to try calibre on those if at all possible....

PeterT, I downloaded Calibre to an old laptop and tried making changes to my Kobo from there. Worked like a charm!

So it IS my USB port[s]/driver whichever! I will look into the links you posted about them and figure out which is easiest for me to get and get hubby to put it in my PC for me, if I need to keep current PC for awhile. Just wondering what are the chances a new USB will work with all my devices now? That's my only fear, but I may have to find out.

Thank you all again for your assistance. Still don't understand why it used to work and then stopped working suddenly. But oh well, thanks again.

Wanted to come back and say I got it working again, about 75% of the time anyways. Here's what worked for me:

With Kobo plugged into computer, right click the drive it's in, select properties, then select hardware, select the Kobo, then properties, then policies.
There are 2 options, on mine the first was selected [Optimize for quick removal], I unchecked that, and selected the next option [Optimize for performance].

Hope it might help someone else.

Thank you again to all the people in this thread for your patience and assistance.

Ducks was cringing with that solution for just the reason you stated. Stuff can be in the Buffer, giving the illusion that it has been written, so as to give the user back control of their mouse and keyboard, instead of having them wait.

Good tip on the slow USB patch for W7 ( use slow machines and XP or Ubuntu to connect to my devices, so not worrying, yet )

This will work as long as you WAIT for the Message, "It is now safe to..."

Failure to do so can corrupt the file system on your device (an possibly lose all it's content )

Note to All:
Please tell us about ALL the pieces in the Puzzle.

In this case the O/S was XP and we chased down the side roads after a W7 issue.

@Blue2u
Make sure that you use the Laptop Manufacturers approved USB device drivers.
Just because your chips are Brand I, does not always mean that the generic Brand I supplied driver is best. The Laptop manufacturer may have made customizations to the supporting circuits.

@Blue2u; the only issue is making sure you remove the device after having stopped it; the act of stopping will ensure that data has been written to the device, so it might even be safest to wait a few seconds after the disconnect button has been hit in calibre (or the remove hardware icon in the system tray).

@Blue2u; the only issue is making sure you remove the device after having stopped it; the act of stopping will ensure that data has been written to the device, so it might even be safest to wait a few seconds after the disconnect button has been hit in calibre (or the remove hardware icon in the system tray).

Finally, one of the things I've learned comes into play, I ALWAYS use the 'safely remove hardware' button when given the option, and with my old system, I always wait until it doesn't show in my taskbar anymore either before I physically unplug it.

appoloin, ducks, and PeterT, Thank you again. It's so nice to be able to use my KT again the way it was [mostly] intended!

Fyi i tried a couple of usb cards in my machine; one a usb 1.1 i got for $5 and a new usb 2.0 card that was alot more. still same problems for me.. i figure it has to be the way the kobo device communicates with my old intel usb drivers, even the generic ones for the pci cards.. sucks large.. think that they would be able to identify the problems and fix it

Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that you can't afford to get too back-level in terms of your PC equipment or operating system software, otherwise you are bound to have problems (sometimes very subtle), particularly in relation to drivers and support of new devices. Take the plunge - will save you time and frustration in the long run.

Fyi i tried a couple of usb cards in my machine; one a usb 1.1 i got for $5 and a new usb 2.0 card that was alot more. still same problems for me.. i figure it has to be the way the kobo device communicates with my old intel usb drivers, even the generic ones for the pci cards.. sucks large.. think that they would be able to identify the problems and fix it

Sometimes you fix a Device problem with a hardware change:
To wit:
My Blue PEz would fault the Intel (replicated on 4 systems) USB2 Enhanced driver (CPU reboot needed to get the error clear as affected all ports). A cheap (slow) USB 1.0 card fixed the problem.

okay here's my work around. i shared the ebook folder on my home network and using my wives laptop and having installed calibre there now can sideload books onto my kobo. little slow but works great. mew pc isn't in the budget this year, (siding). this works great